Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 16

Ten scientists are racing

 Over at Concatenation, Jonathan Cowie very kindly invited me to select a list of my favorite scientists born in the twentieth century. I found that it was easy to come up with two or three but much harder to come up with ten. Jonathan was very patient with me in the time it took to make and submit my selection, but it's now done and should you so wish you can read it here:

http://www.concatenation.org/science/reynolds-scientist.html

Be sure to check out the rest of the recent content on the alway...

Continuity

 This excellent bird book was a family favorite in the 1970s. I believe it was purchased on a holiday in Barmouth, North Wales.

It came back to me after a recent bereavement and I remembered that I had logged many bird sightings in the Bridgend and Barry area between 1977 and 1978. I had not seen a siskin, though, and since I did happen to see a beautiful pair of siskins yesterday, I thought I might as well add an another entry:

And here is a siskin - not the one I saw yesterday, but another sight...

Truly these are the last days.

 Robert Fripp in a beard playing a ZZ Top cover.

(Toyah and Robert's Sunday Lunch videos have been one of the few bearable things about 2020/21. Thank you both!)

We've been landing on Mars for a long time.

 The Mars Perseverance rover...

is as far from Viking...

As Viking is from the 1931 Schneider Trophy seaplane:

Happy Birthday to me.

 A lovely present (an "ES-335 figured" Epiphone) from my wife:

Update

 I'd like to thank all who left kind comments following the news from January. Although it's been a difficult time for the family, rest assured I'm moving forward again and busy on several fronts.

My editor got back to me with comments on Inhibitor Phase well before Christmas, but with everything going on (it really wasn't a great time) I was unable to make serious progress on the rewrites until early this year. However, I've now turned them in, and I'm expecting to get the second set of queries ...

Lower Dens - Ondine

 I heard this song on a plane a few years ago. I was so smitten with it that I bought the album before flying home, and I've not regretted it. I was listening to it again today on my running mix and thought it worth a mention, as you don't see much being said about Lower Dens. 

Here's an excellent live version of Ondine:

The Motels

 I like to think that I have a pretty exhaustive knowledge of punk, post-punk and new wave, but inevitably my perceptions are filtered through the fact of living in the UK during the late 70s and early 80s. Every now and then it's nice to be blindsided by a completely amazing piece of music - even a group - that somehow managed never to come to my attention.

Such is the case with The Motels. I don't think I'd ever heard of them, let alone heard anything by then. Then Bruce Springsteen (who I thin...

Mountaintop Removal - Lissie

 This is about as good as it gets.

Put a monkey on it

Late in life I have discovered a surprising if relatively useless superpower: the ability to guess the identity of the celebrities on ITV's The Masked Singer.

So far in the current season, I correctly identified (by vocal stylings or clues):

Sophie Ellis Bextor

Martine McCutcheon

John Thomson

Lenny Henry

On that basis, I am unwisely going to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I think John Barrowman is one of the remaining celebs.